Feasibility Studies

Is a cancelled project a bad project? After surveying about 8,000 IT projects, the Standish Group reported that about 30 percent of all projects were cancelled ("Charting the Seas of Information Technology", 1994). Capers Jones reports that the average cancelled project in the US is about a year behind schedule and has consumed 200 percent of its expected budget by the time it's cancelled (Assessment and Control of Software Risks, Yourdon Press, 1994). Jones estimates that work on cancelled projects comprises about 15 percent of total US software efforts, amounting to as much as $14 billion per year in 1993 dollars. In spite of these grim statistics, cancelling a project is, in itself, neither good nor bad. Cancelling a project later than necessary is bad. The trick is to perform the minimum amount of work necessary to determine that the project should be cancelled.